Is getting ahead in maths a waste of time?

[Bubbinsmakesthree]

DS is going into year 1 next year. His literacy and writing is about average but he seems to have a bit of an aptitude (and enthusiasm) for maths.

I could easily encourage his interest in maths (he enjoys doing workbooks and being set number challenges) but is it a bit of a waste of effort? Will he just get bored at school having to go over the same learning again?

If it makes a difference the school follows a Singapore approach to maths teaching.

you could always encourage his enjoyment for the subject in a fun way (eg: games like teddy numbers) rather than focusing on the curriculum

also watching tv shows such as numberblocks with him

Totally depends on the school.

My son has just finished reception and this year he was placed in a Y2 set for maths and phonics. So they took an individual approach to it.

My friends daughter has the opposite at her school. Very able child is just sitting bored because they're told that it's not worth putting on a whole different activity for just one child in the class.

also watching tv shows such as numberblocks with him

He is obsessed with numberblocks!

We do lots of number based games so it’s not like we are ‘book learning’ or following a curriculum but maths is maths however you learn it?

Look at the rich website for ideas to encourage sideways, it’s not helpful when parents move them in to more advance stuff than their peers as then they get bored in class when the topics are taught.

onatree they stream in phonics, but I thought one of the principles of the Singapore/mastery approach (not that I know much about it) was teaching as a group and bringing everyone up to the same level?

@trinity0097 what is the rich website, is that a typo?

My dd is in nursery and loves numbers. She seems to have an aptitude for them but we’ve just used it in different ways; more so music. In music there is a need to know numbers, fractions, additions and subtractions quite young so she’s finding it a good challenge to use her love of numbers in a musical way. It does mean her maths skills are ahead of her peers but not in a way that would then mean school becomes boring as it’s more the application of the maths that’s important in music

nrich wasng a typo.

I agree with going sideways, not further in the curriculum. Music is a good one.

Nrich, sorry, it autocorrected!

My ds1 loves maths and would find ways to explore his own interests, for example when I told him about square numbers he then sat and used a calculator to work out the square numbers of each number until he had covered an A4 page! He particularly enjoyed the app dragonbox (as did I!) and he is fascinated by time and money. When he wanted a hamster he spent ages researching the best price for all the different accessories. His other love is programming. We never pushed his interests just followed them. He is now on the gifted and talented programme at secondary, predicted a 9 (A*) for maths. The key is to let them follow their own path with encouragement and opportunities.

My son's able in maths and we made the decision not to teach him ahead. I think it's worked well. He is still scintillated with maths at age 10. But then, you never know - maybe he would still love maths no matter what we did, or didn't, do.

In summer after YR we did 2 things. We let him play Monopoly (endlessly, against us or between teams of toys), and bought him the Usborne book of times tables. I only cracked on the times tables book because he was already obsessed with counting in 3s, 7s, 9s etc. We also had Numicon at home just for fun. In infants we were trying to give him the scope to do his own exploration of numbers in an open ended way. He derived some pretty cool stuff for himself, like the pattern of even and odd numbers and how to add multi-digit numbers. DH (a maths lecturer) felt really strongly that this space to make his own discoveries was more valuable than getting ahead. Personally I would much rather do worksheets than monopoly, but it's not about me.

This is very much personal though. I have more Tiger Mother style friends who take a very different approach.

@Bubbinsmakesthree

Wow that’s an awful approach! Every human is an individual. We ARENT all the same level so teaching everyone on a group isn’t going to make it so. They could send me to training with Mo Farah, it would only depress me and hamper Mo because he’d never be able to get any speed up without having to stop and wait for me.

If we accept that sports training needs to be streamed why do some deny that academic needs to be too. I’m grateful our school takes each child as an individual aa my son has thrived so much in reception getting to challenged himself.

If we accept that sports training needs to be streamed why do some deny that academic needs to be too

'cos we don't, we accept that training needs to be individualised, just like learning, even when Mo Farah is training with others with the same coach, they are not all doing the same workouts (ie streamed) they have individual training plans, much of which can be done alongside peers for their benefits.

Streaming is not the only way to individualise learning, indeed it does nothing to individualise it, although it does of course reduce the differences in understanding during any whole class discussion / presentation.

I don’t know onatree - the idea is explained here:

www.ypo.co.uk/news-and-events/blog/five-things-you-should-know-about-singapore-maths

As I say I don’t know much about it beyond what i’ve been reading in the the last few days but the idea seems to be the more able go deeper not faster.

So it seems the conclusion is find ways to broaden/deepen his existing knowledge rather than deliberately push him on.

My normal tactic is just work with his interests but he has such an insatiable appetite for maths at the moment it’s hard not to feel he’ll be galloping ahead. His first question on waking up this morning was ‘what’s nine squared?’

It sounds from what i’ve read that being able to recall/use times tables is still a core skill so I might do a bit of that with him. He’s totally ‘got’ numberbonds to 10 now - we had a little board game based on numberbonds (‘10 on the spot’) and he used to have to figure it out by counting on but he can just access that knowledge now without thinking about it.

I don’t know if the numberblocks obsession came before the maths obsession or they’re both just fuelling each other but I can’t sing the praises of numberblocks enough, he’s absorbed so much mathematical thinking through it. We were talking about prime numbers the other day and he figured out all the primes up to 19 on his own because he understands the principle of it through numberblocks.

I think learning tables off by heart would be a good way to go. Lots of schools rely on home to sort that anyway, so there’s unlikely to be swathes of tables practice time in class when he’s just bored.

Have you got Plyt? You can use it for loads of different maths, my DS and my class love it.

So your question to him - how can you figure out what 9 squared is? Then give him the supplies he asks for to figure it out - whiteboard, bits of pasta on the floor to arrange in rows and columns, abacus. That is a very different thing to trying to teach methods or doing directive "jumping through hoops set by adults" worksheets.

but maths is maths however you learn it

There is so much to maths that they don't really cover in the curriculum.

So, yes they learn about prime numbers. But they don't learn about hunting for primes, or usefulness, or testing for them.
I'm not even sure they learn how to test for divisibility by 11 these days.

Number bases aren't on the curriculum anywhere (something I did at primary level 40 years ago). So converting between decimal and base 2 and back again, or using hexadecimal (both used in computing).

You could blow his mind with infinity, and how some infinities are bigger than others. Or, (far far too young really), if he knows about square roots then the square root of -1 is 'i'.

At y1 he'll probably be too young for these, but if he has an interest in maths I'd foster it without trying to just 'get ahead'.

However I'd endorse everyone saying time tables. Up to 12, forwards, backwards and inside out. If he's very keen then also squares to 20 as well. I have this week been doing times tables with my 14 yo (who just cannot keep them in her head). Maths is just so much harder without them at your fingertips.

Dealing confidently with negative numbers is also really useful.

As is estimating, and real life quantities.

Di you know that 1ml is the same as 1cm^3 and 1ml of water weighs 1g?

Biggest thing that spurred my daughter on in maths wasn’t workbooks or extra activities or anything like that... it was the challenges and greater depth problems they set within the whole-class Maths lessons where she was paired up with another similarly able child and they developed each other’s thinking and worked out alternative ways to solve a problem etc.

Yes the general principle is that the whole class work together on the same concept and problems and you keep bringing the kids’ different ways of solving it to the class and discussing it all... but the more able kids DO still get challenged and extended - but it’s in terms of their depth of thinking and different ways to solve a problem - rather than just throwing bigger numbers at them depending on what table they sit on in the class. So they’ll work through some tasks on money for example - paying for a set of items and working out change... and then you might extend the kids who are finding it straight forward by telling them to find different ways to pay for the amount if they don’t have any 10p coins; or how many different combinations of items they could buy for a given amount - more open ended problem solving tasks where they really need to understand what they’re doing and be able to work systematically through it.

My kids do quite like playing on the Sumdog website though when they get the chance.

TEENS TIMESTWO - Please tell me how you work with dd on timetables? DD (12) is the same but had me as a mother - a maths illiterate. I would love to find the key to that particular lock.

I don't think it would be a waste of time.

My nephew is in year 8 and has his maths lessons with the Year 11s and the sixth formers as he's so far ahead. He loves maths and spends a lot of free time doing maths.

I don't know what he will do next year when he's finished the A level syllabus. I guess either the school will find him non national curriculum stuff to do at a higher level or he will find his own stuff to do. A good school should be able to differentiate.

I'd echo, make sure he knows his tables (by playing games) and just let him have fun with maths. Give him the tools to work things out and do lots of 'what if' and ' I wonder' type questions. Also introduce him to early coding.

Harriet No special wand. If I had one I wouldn't have an about-to-start-y10 who doesn't know 4x8 .

We've just been doing them in the car. Starting with the ones she can do or count quickly through (1, 2, 5, 9, 10, 11), then adding in the missing ones, with repetition.

Also trying to do factors e.g. 'common factor between 27 & 36' as that is really useful for secondary maths. And factor pairs for 24, 36 & 48.

I have a maths degree, it still hasn't helped with DD's times tables! The hours we have put into them over the years...

Just to say that for some people, including my maths whizz son and me (with an A at A'level), times tables are particularly tricky. Instead ds and I have a good enough knowledge of maths to work round it. Focus on the 2 times table and 3 times table, learn the trick of the 9 times table, learn the square numbers, and then whilst you might not be able to recite the other tables you can work them out!

We found counting in groups a useful exercise for times tables. But I agree with Lori, "good-enough" mental maths skills can get you round pure rote learning. If 9x6 doesn't stick, get good at taking 6 away from 10x6. If you can't remember 8x6, can you figure it out from something similar you do know, like 6x6 or 8x5? Times tables with DD was very much about helping her apply strategies very quickly. You don't need to parrot them if you can calculate them almost instantly.